The NatCen Blog

Here we’ll be talking about our research in the context of the latest news, opinion andanalysis through comments from our team of experts. We’d love to hear from you, so post comments or get in touch with us.

New findings published this week from ScotCen’s Scottish Social Attitudes survey have highlighted both falling attendance at religious services and a steady increase in the number of Scots saying they do not belong to a religion.

Today the Guardian reports new data from the British Social Attitudes survey showing that three in ten people describe themselves as being very or a little racially prejudiced. As the co-director of this survey, I’d like to use this space to explain how we arrived at these numbers, and outline the sorts of issues we consider when interpreting attitudinal data.

David Cameron’s speech this weekend at the Munich Security Conference had a lot to say about how well integrated – or not - different communities are into British life: “Under the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and apart from the mainstream. We’ve failed to provide a vision of society to which they feel they want to belong. We’ve even tolerated these segregated communities behaving in ways that run completely counter to our values.” Chief Executive Penny Young asks the question: Does it reflect how people actually think and behave?